Second City

Flash Atölye is a project/exhibition space that I co-founded with Olivia Valentine, in October of 2012. The goal of the space was to create a place of cultural exchange through a quick succession of projects. It is located in a commercial “pasaj” in one of the old market-places in Izmir, Turkey. The market, as well as the pasaj itself, is a smorgasbord of small shops, tailors, barbers, printing presses, yarn stores, leatherworks, bakers, etc.

Over 10 months, we invited our community of artists and architects in Chicago, New York, and Izmir to do projects, set up exhibitions, performances, and happenings that engage the context of the space. The artists and architects who participated have a focus on the labor and craft of making, and this allowed an unlikely dialogue to emerge between the artists and the community of the pasaj, even without a shared background or language.

Second City, which Olivia and I collaborated on, was the inaugural exhibition for the space. The project was to manifest the light of the 4th, “missing” skylight in the pasaj, which was suggested by the reflections of the other 3 skylights on Flash’s glass walls. The missing skylight made the interior of Flash part of the shared interior of the pasaj. For more information on the projects at Flash Atölye, see: http://flashatolye.tumblr.com/